General Community News

Maverick is open for development

Martin Pitt has announced that Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10 is now open for development. Those of you who are already on the maverick-changes[1] mailing list will have noticed, but now it is official. Developers are encouraged to sign up and dig in to help make the next version of Ubuntu the best it can be.

Call for Ubuntu User Days Instructors

It's time to start planning for the second Ubuntu User Day! This time it will be held on June 5, 2010. We are going to attempt to fill 24 time slots so that everyone around the world has the ability to participate in the User Day! You can find out more information about Ubuntu User Days by visiting the Ubuntu User Day wiki page [1] or the planning wiki page [2]. To sign up to lead a session, visit the Course Suggestions wiki page [3] and look through the course suggestions that we have provided. We are also willing to take your suggestions on other courses to teach, just keep in mind that Ubuntu User Days are geared towards new and newer Ubuntu Users. You can see the logs [4] from the last Ubuntu User Day to see some of the courses that were taught then. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions and I look forward to working with you soon.

Window indicators

The Ayatana Indicators work has given us a crisp, clean basis for indicators in the panel. We’ve said they will all look a particular way, and behave a particular way. And we’ve said they will be placed on the right of the panel. But why limit indicators to the panel? Let’s make it possible for applications to use indicators themselves, for all the things that indicators are good at:

Conveying a particular state, such as whether or not the application is connected

Providing a handle for the indicator menu, to modify that state

We’ll start with “window indicators”, or “windicators” for fun. Windicators are indicators displayed in the window title bar that behave just like the indicators in the panel: they have an icon which shows state, and clicking on the icon brings up a menu. Applications can create, update and remove window indicators using an API more or less like the AppIndicator framework first put to use in 10.04 LTS.

We’ve carefully placed all the panel indicators on the right, and we’ve carefully put the window controls and window title on the left. So now we have all this space on the right. As a pattern, it would fit to put the window indicators there. Cody Russell is leading some work at Canonical around the technology which actually draws the window title bar and borders. It’s called “client side window decorations”. We are moving the rendering of the window decorations into the app itself, so that you don’t have the window manager and application drawing those pieces separately. That simplifies certain things (of course it also makes some things harder).

New Ubuntu Regional Membership Boards

It’s been two years since we introduced the Regional Membership Boards and since then they have done a fantastic job recognizing the contributions of new Ubuntu members. The term of most board members in the Americas, Asia/Oceania and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) ended, and the Community Council asked for nominations. Here are the new members of the Membership Boards:

Americas:

Elizabeth Krumbach

Belinda Lopez

Nathan Handler

Duda Nogueira

Mackenzie Morgan

Asia/Oceania:

Matthew Lye

Khairul Aizat Kamarudzzaman

amachu:

Robert Collins

Emmet Hikory

Muhammad Takdir

Melissa Draper

EMEA:

Laura Czajkowski

Alan Pope

Dennis Kaarsemaker

Stéphane Graber

Oliver Grawert

David Rubin

Congratulations to everybody who made it on board, and thanks a lot to everybody who put hard work into keeping the Regional Membership Boards up and running.

Maverick UDS Translations Sessions

David Planella, Ubuntu Translations, discusses the future of the Ubuntu Translation efforts.

Engines are warming up for the next Ubuntu Developer Summit next week in Brussels, and on the Community track we’ve got a rich set of sessions to discuss a lot of topics around Translations. These will help shaping up the road map for the next version of Ubuntu, the Maverick Meerkat.

We discussed the sessions in the last translations meeting and they have now all been scheduled. You can also see the overview on the wiki, although they will all be tracked from the linked blueprints. Here they are:

Translations community round table

Launchpad Translations round table

Desktop and Translations round table

Kubuntu Translations round table

Translations Community Advocacy

Translations Community Learning Content

Translations Community Events

Extend the translations reporting site

Translation teams health check

Launchpad Translations Reporting API

Developer education on localization

Universe is translatable in Launchpad

Improve Translations Packaging for Help in Ubuntu Applications

Proactive bug detection

Fixed schedule for translation updates

Creating a localized help.ubuntu.com

Improving communication with translators in Launchpad

We're already looking forward to seeing everyone again in Brussels, it’s going to be epic once more!

Patch Day Success!

The first Patch Day [1], was held on May 5, 2010. We were able to review 111 bugs with patches over a 49 hour period. There were 185 un-reviewed bugs in the queue at the start of Patch Day which came down to 74 un-reviewed bugs by the end of the day [2], and down to 69 as of now.

Special thanks go out to all the folks who helped us review patches. Your assistance has helped us do 60% of what we targeted. Review Leads, thank for volunteering your time in helping with Patch Day.

Patch Day is a concept similar to Hug Days, where we will test patches and forward working patches upstream. If the bug is critical enough, we will try to get the patch applied in Ubuntu immediately. We'd like your help to get these submissions reviewed and if necessary sent upstream so that they don't bit-rot and to encourage people to continue helping us improve open source software.

Ubuntu Open Week en Español closes on high note

The Spanish speaking community has wrapped up its Ubuntu Open week. The IRC sessions offered the community a chance to learn, network and share. The event was organized by the Central American LoCo ninjas. Sessions covered topics like, new features in the different desktops, Community building, Documentation session, Bug triaging, General community orientation, and even a historical recap session highlighting all the achievements of Ubuntu as a project so far.

This Open Week featured the use of Lernid, which made joining much easier for people who had never used IRC before and ClaseBot, a ClassBot clone made ready by the great Nathan Handler and the ClassBot folks. A special session dedicated to feedback also gave users an open mic to express their opinions on the event. the session was very refreshing and energizing for the organizing party. It was a very interesting week filled with Ubuntu spirit for all participants. Looking forward to Ubuntu User Day.

Ubuntu Open Week – Lucid: Community, Canonical, Collaboration

Ubuntu Open Week took place last week. It was the 8th Open Week to date. Ubuntu Open Week is a week long event with everything from “Ask Mark” (an hour long Q&A session where Ubuntu Founder and Canonical VP of Product Design answers questions from the community) to an introduction to Ubuntu development.

There were Q&A sessions from the Canonical Desktop, Server, Kernel and Community teams. The Canonical developers really take time to make themselves available to the community and answer curious questions, or just point to how the community can help in particular areas of Ubuntu. Speaking of community participation, Jorge Castro, from the Community team, gave instruction on how people who want to contribute to the Maverick Meerkat, Ubuntu 10.10 release can do so through remote participation.

This Open Week also had sessions focused on empowering LoCo teams. Members from the LoCo Council were on hand to answer questions from the community during their LoCo Council Q&A session. Leandro Gomez's session on marketing your LoCo Team, showed teams how to use different tools and techniques to let people know what their LoCo team is doing. He also covered recruiting new members for your team, the use of social sites, blogs, podcasting, and the creation of simple but effective newsletters. Randal Ross's sessions delved into energizing an Ubuntu Community, and marketing Ubuntu locally. Randall noted that doing so is a great way to get people energized about not only the software, but also the ethos. Other sessions covered more technical aspects of Ubuntu, patch reviewing, adopting a package, being an upstream contact, proactive security, bug reports and Ubuntu development. It was another awesome Ubuntu Open Week packed full of everything Ubuntu.

If you missed any of the sessions, or just want to read through a particularly great one you attended, you can follow this link https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek and click on any title to view the session logs.

Call For Nominations: Ubuntu Women Leader Leadership Committee

Early this week Amber Graner, the current leader of the Ubuntu Women Project, opened up nominations for the Ubuntu Women Project Leadership Committee.

Amber writes, the Ubuntu Women Project Team is moving from the transitional appointed Leader to a New Ubuntu Women Project Leadership Committee of 3 co-leaders. This committee is loosely based on the TresChix approach that some chapters of LinuxChix use.

Ubuntu Brainstorm is a community site geared toward letting you add your ideas for Ubuntu. You can submit your own idea, or vote for or against another idea. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

LoCo News

LoCo Teams, Leaders, and Lessons Learned: Florida Team

The Ubuntu Florida LoCo Team kicked off the newest Interview Series: LoCo Teams, Leaders, and Lessons Learned. In this interview the Florida LoCo Team lead and contact Chris Crisafulli talks about the tools the team uses, events they attend. The interview also lists advice and help ideas for other LoCo teams. Read the full interview at the link below.

Lucid release party in Beijing!

The Ubuntu China LoCo Community hosted a party May 8th in the Traktirr Russian Restaurant, Beijing, in order to celebrate the release of 10.04 LTS. Everybody, from newbie to hacker, was warmly welcomed. They scheduled some lectures, but hope that everyone comes for the fun of the release party. They had cake, free CDs, and other freebies to hand out. We look forward to hearing more about their release party soon.

Scottish Lucid Release Party

The Strathclyde University’s Union Lounge in Glasgow was the scene for the Scottish Lucid Release Party on May 6th. In addition to the social part of the party, there were demonstrations of the 4 official Ubuntu derivatives (including the brand new Lubuntu),and free CDs for all.

The Economist and Launchpad

The on-line team at The Economist[1] recently set up a Launchpad project[2], using a commercial subscription[3]. Matthew Revell asked Mark Theunissen, from The Economist Group, about their plans. They use almost all open source in their stack, and they customize. They chose Launchpad for its usability and excellent tool set. Read more of the interview at the link.

Ubuntu package suggestions

The Ubuntu packages portlet lists the most recent project packages in Ubuntu’s main archive. But there are thousands of Ubuntu packages that are not linked to a registered Launchpad project. The links are needed to forward bugs upstream, sync translations, and get the latest project code. The portlet now suggests unlinked packages.

You can help Ubuntu and the project by selecting the right package. There are many cases where the project’s name is different from the Ubuntu package, and you can search for an alternate package. You can also state that the project is not packaged in Ubuntu.

After the project is linked to an Ubuntu package, it is possible to link it to other project packages from the All packages page. You can also do this from the project’s series pages.

Automatic generation of translation templates

Last year, we integrated Launchpad Translations with Launchpad’s code hosting, meaning you could import both translations and templates from a Bazaar branch and also export translations to a branch. Even at the time, we knew that the story wasn’t complete: you still had to somehow generate your translation templates (in the form of GNU gettext’s .pot files) and get them into your Bazaar branch before people could start translating your project in Launchpad. However, we also knew that automatically generating translation templates was a big task. I’m now pleased to say that Launchpad can automatically generate the templates on your behalf. To learn how to get it all set up for your project, visit the link below.

The Planet

Akademy 2010 Travel Requests

This is a friendly reminder to get your travel subsidy requests in sooner rather than later*. As many of you have noticed, The KDE Akademy conference has been growing in size over the years. We try our best to provide support to community members to attend, but funding is always limited.

Many of you are familiar with the travel request procedure, but everyone should review the reimbursement policy to be familiar of any policy changes. Also, when you send your request please include a summary estimate of costs when you request travel funding.

Philippines 2010 Elections and Ubuntu

The Philippines 2010 Election will be using an electronic counting machine for the first time. The Linux-powered machines were provided by Smartmatic and the ROMs are managed by (and supposedly programmed in) Ubuntu. Yes, Ubuntu has a major role to play, albeit obscurely, in the country’s history.

In The Press

Review: Ubuntu "Lucid Lynx" 10.04 LTS

Eugenia of OS News thinks the installation is much simpler and more to the point that ever before. She really liked the look and feel of it. In all cases, either installing from scratch (in 2 of her laptops), or upgrading (in the rest of her 2 laptops), everything worked perfectly. She remembers back in the day when upgrades occasionally would break X11 etc, but not this time. Loading Ubuntu is now super-fast. It loads at around 10 seconds on her hard drive-based laptops, and in about 15 seconds on my SSD-based ones. The new login screen is beautiful and functional. Only thing she'd like added in that screen would be a battery life indicator. It is her opinion, that Ubuntu is by far the most usable Linux distribution, and for many people it's perfect as a replacement to Windows and Mac OS X. Back in the day there were a lot of "but" when someone was suggesting Ubuntu as a complete replacement, but she thinks that the distro has come a long way, and delivers the goods.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx First Impressions

James Pyles was featured on LXer with what he saw with Lucid Lynx. First, he was surprised with how fast he could download it only 24 hours after it had been released. And this was with a direct download from Ubuntu.com. He ran the ISO directly in a VMware Workstation 7 - he doesn't normally install a brand new release on his production machine. Using the easy install method the installation was quick and was almost totally a hands off experience. http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/135145/

Ubuntu Lucid almost shines

Alastair Otter, for MyBroadband.co.za, took a look at Lucid Lynx and the first thing that caught is eye was the new theme. "It is horrible" and "the new look is dark and unappealing" were his comments. Once he got past that, though, there were things that he did like. MeMenu and Gwibber, though somewhat basic, is a good start for social networking. For him, PulseAudio has finally begun to work right. Although used to working with the command line to install and configure applications, he likes what he sees of the Software Center. He also appreciated the speed on booting and switching between applications, and the Ubuntu One Music Store which has finally become available in South Africa. More information is available at the link. http://mybroadband.co.za/news/software/12280-Ubuntu-Lucid-almost-shines.html

Ubuntu 10.04 arrives with extended support (and less brown )

Although the focus on stability means that Lucid's roster of new features is shorter than usual, it still brings some impressive enhancements. One of the most noticeable changes is a completely new theme that radically departs from the distro's previous signature style. The fancy feline has shed Ubuntu's traditional brown coat and is sporting a sleek new look with an updated color palette. The new theme, called Ambience, has black trim, orange highlights, and an aubergine wallpaper. The visual redesign is part of a broader branding overhaul that will help to modernize Ubuntu's image. True to the LTS label, Lucid seems relatively robust.

In The Blogosphere

Ubuntu 10.04 - Perfect

Six months ago Bryan Lunduke declared Ubuntu 9.10 to be the best version of Linux he had ever used on a desktop computer. In fact, he went on to call it “almost perfect“. The only thing that kept it from being perfect was that it wasn't a LTS version. So Ubuntu 10.04 is important. This is a release we are going to be using for the next two years, and it is the release that many companies will measure up against Windows and MacOS X. But how does it stack up? Ubuntu 10.04 ups the ante significantly by bringing polished features that Windows 7 and MacOS X users simply do not have. The user experience is clean and elegant, with an almost timeless quality to it. The functionality is advanced and the integration between applications superb. Add to this the fact that Ubuntu 10.04 has 3 years of full support ahead of it, and it is by far, the best operating system for desktops, laptops and netbooks available today.

Mark Shuttleworth: No Gnome-Shell In Maverick

Every Ubuntu release is followed by Ubuntu Open Week during which Mark Shuttleworth holds a Q&A session where users can ask him pretty much anything.

A condensed selection of highlights follow:

Maverick will not be coming with the GNOME Shell interface by default but will be available to download via the repos.

RGBA transparency will more than likely be enabled by default

Missing those indicator tooltips in Lucid? Well, they won’t be returning for the Meerkat.

Remember that “application ballot screen” brainstorm idea that I hated? When asked if Ubuntu could have something similar Mark said no, reasons being that: “one of the really strong values we have is that two users of ubuntu should, by default, either be having the same experience, or be expert enough to understand why they are not.”

No plans to support blu-ray playback out of the box due to the usual reasons

The Ubuntu Netbook Moblin Remix idea has been dropped

He was asked if Nautilus-Elementary could become default. He responded that whilst he hadn’t seen it that it ‘seems to be generating a lot of excitement’.

The other Ubuntu Linux distributions

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of ComputerWorld likes Ubuntu 10.04 a lot, but while he likes its GNOME 2.30 interface, he also likes other interfaces such as KDE. It would be nice if Ubuntu could also play MP3s, common video formats, and Flash from the get-go. You can install all these, and other extras from the Ubuntu repositories, but there's also a wide-variety of Ubuntu spin-offs that come ready to give you the functionality you want right out of the box. For Steven's summary on the other Ubuntu versions, including his take on each one, visit the link below.

Ubuntu 10.04 Gets Free Manual

Christopher Tozzi at WorksWithU posts a review of the new Ubuntu Manual that was created for 10.04 by the team lead by Benjamin Humphrey. The Ubuntu Manual is aimed at non-technical new users. Christopher likes the manual and says it reaches out well to non-geeks by not going into every little detail and every little option available. Instead they worked on making the default install as clear to the new user as possible. He is also impressed with how well organized and presented the Ubuntu Manual is, especially compared to some of the Ubuntu Wiki pages, which are not always well written or edited. Christopher does admit that it's not as complete as the wiki, but says that's okay as it covers everything he can think of that a new, non-technical user might want to know. Christopher seems quite happy to be able to have the Ubuntu Manual as something he can direct new users to.

In Other News

Ubuntu Server and Apache Tomcat – supporting MuleSoft

Earlier this year, MuleSoft approached Canonical with the desire to partner with them, to improve their default java container, Tomcat, for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server. The idea was to make Tomcat on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS easier to download, install, and configure on Ubuntu than JBOSS is on RHEL. The Ubuntu Server engineering team worked with Mulesoft engineering to update Tomcat upstream and those updates were pulled into Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. We are now pleased to announce that the Apache Tomcat package for Ubuntu has been updated and refreshed to the latest Apache release (6.0.26).

Mulesoft is a great example of our ISV community stepping up with key community contributions. With Ubuntu being community driven, Mulesoft worked closely with Ubuntu Server engineering to bring the Tomcat packages up to the latest release and pushed those changes upstream. Contributions from the community are key to the success of Ubuntu. MuleSoft also provides enterprise class support for running Apache Tomcat on Ubuntu Server in mission-critical deployments. If you use Tomcat and have servers running in test or production, check out MuleSoft’s add-on product for Tomcat, called Tcat Server.

ZaReason are now sponsors of the World Play Day competition!

ZaReason has kindly come forth as a sponsor for the Ubuntu Women World Play Day competition! Cathy and Earl of ZaReason have kindly offered their support by donating a Terra A20 netbook[1] and a gold USB necklace[2].

This means that the competition can now offer 3 prizes! Not only that, after contacting Canonical CEO Jane Silber, we can confirm that she would be honored to choose the second netbook prize! For a listing of all the donated prizes, and information on the drawings, please visit the link below.

Canonical licenses H.264 – Theora out for the count?

Canonical LTD, is currently the only Linux company to license H.264/AVC, the patented non-free technology used to compress video and favored by companies such as Apple & Microsoft for HTML5 Video. What’s interesting is that the rival to H.264, is the free and open codec, Ogg Theroa. One would naturally assume it would be the favored choice for a Linux distribution’s parent to support. With Canonical putting their weight behind H.264, and already having the most popular desktop Linux distribution, this might tip the scales to H264 adoption for HTML5 video on the web. And does this mean Ubuntu 10.04 LTS users are covered and can install H.264 to their systems without worrying about patent issues?

Update: Mark Shuttleworth has helped clarify the issue: "I believe the licenses he's referring are purely in support of OEMs in specific cases"

3+ months and 300+ great people

Matt Asay of Canonical says: "I’ve been at Canonical for just over three months now, and have only met a fraction of the company’s 330-plus employees. Those that I have met, however, are exceptional. This is, of course, one of the core mantras that drives Canonical: hire the best of the best, wherever they may live. In this picture you can see three of those “best of the best,” and some of my favorite people (from left to right): Rick Spencer (Engineering Manager, Desktop with the most understated sense of humor in anyone I know), James Troup (IT guru and slipper wearer), and Matt Zimmerman (CTO and rock star)."

"These people are why I love Canonical. The products we work on are great, and the customers who are joining us are awesome. But the people with whom I get to interact every day…? Exceptional."

"If you care to join Canonical and think you would enjoy working alongside this crowd, take a look at our jobs page and let me know where you’d fit."

Ubuntu - Get Involved

The Ubuntu community consists of individuals and teams, working on different aspects of the distribution, giving advice and technical support, and helping to promote Ubuntu to a wider audience. No contribution is too small, and anyone can help. It's your chance to get in on all the community fun associated with developing and promoting Ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate